And now, a word from our sponsor (PLEASE READ)

Terry Kennedy, Operations Mgr TERRY at SPCVXA.SPC.EDU
Fri Mar 19 06:37:03 EST 1999


  I'm the guy who manages the servers at SPC (and gets to decide what is and
isn't allowed). Imagine my surprise when I found several hundred error mes-
sages in my mailbox, all larger than a megabyte in size. Then, when I started
investigating, I found other parts of the SPC mail system clogged up due to
sites that won't receive messages that large. And then I discovered that the
BOC-L moderator's mailbox was full due to all of this. Then I started getting
error messages about error messages...

  WE ARE NOT AMUSED

  If you want this list to continue here, this had better stop (along with
some other lesser offenses which I'll detail later). If you have something
to share with BOC-L readers but it's binary and/or large, put it on a web
page and send *only* the URL to the list. Given that you can get free web
pages from any number of outfits (like Geocities), this is a much better way
of distributing your files, since a) only those who want it will receive it,
and b) it's guaranteed that they'll get it in a manner that they can use,
rather than as ASCII gibberish in a digest message.

  Other things that should stop as well:

  1) Quoting the entire message (including headers) you're responding to.
     Only include the relevant text, not the whole message. And avoid the
     urge to indent the quoted text with a zillion spaces.

  2) No messages in HTML, either with or without a copy in non-HTML form.
     URL's, etc. are Ok - but nobody wants to wade through a message that's
     50% HTML tags.

  3) No VCARD attachments. There are lots of standards-compliant email
     clients out there. Use one.

  I have changed the maximum message size that listserv.spc.edu allows. I'm
not going to say what it is (to avoid people sending large messages just under
the maximum size), but it's plenty big enough for single messages and the
daily digests.

  Hopefully this will be the last time that BOC-L shows up on my radar screen
for a long time...

        Your not so benevolent despot,

        Terry Kennedy             Operations Manager, Academic Computing
        terry at spcvxa.spc.edu      St. Peter's College, Jersey City, NJ USA
        +1 201 915 9381 (voice)   +1 201 435-3662 (FAX)



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